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Improving soil health and building new soil

Improving soil health and building new soil

Soil health is vital to ecosystem health. Today the U.S.A.'s biggest export, in tons and dollar value, is eroding topsoil. What topsoil remains is often drenched with chemicals and nearly devoid of life. This stops the soil-building process.

Fortunately topsoil can be grown fairly quickly. Even land so damaged it has no topsoil can be restored.

Building soil and keeping it healthy

How to build new topsoil by botanist Christine Jones. Several centimeters of topsoil per year can form under favorable conditions, which good management can create. This article explains how to do it. May 2002.

Restoring perennial grasslands by Christine Jones. The key to restoring perennial grasslands is restoring microbial activity and nutrient cycling by increasing the level of soil organic matter. Once conditions are right for them, perennial grasses will return. July 2001.

Working with soil life(articles).Soil organisms, particularly fungi that help plant roots absorb nutrients, are vital to maintaining soil health. The organisms present affect which nutrients are available and which plants can grow and thrive. Soil life can be seeded, its activity measured, and its health promoted by good management.

Revegetating soilless land(articles). Soil-building is a vital part of revegetating sites where topsoil has been lost or never existed in the first place.

Indians seeded terra preta soils. While tropical rains leach nutrients from most soils, they don't from this rich, fertile "black earth," apparently created by a special suite of microbes. Terra preta may cover 10% or more of the Amazon basin. At theatlantic.com.

The Great Salinity Debate by Christine Jones. An alternate explanation for dryland salinity affecting many areas of Australia. On Landholders for the Environment website.